Missed chances frustrate Pulis
TONY PULIS tempered frustration with a dollop of pragmatism after Middlesbrough flunked their opportunity to go top of the Championship.
Despite going in front through Britt Assombalonga, Boro could not capitalise. ‘We have to be more clinical,’ Pulis said. ‘We need to score more goals, to win games. We can’t keep relying on the back players.
‘The back players have embraced what they’re there for — to stop people from scoring.’
In a developing theme in Boro’s otherwise impressive form, a second goal proved elusive and left them exposed to Jarrod Bowen’s suckerpunch penalty equaliser midway through the second half. It meant one of Pulis’s former clubs, West Brom, went to the top of the table.
Only in the dying embers of the contest — when Jonny Howson’s header was brilliantly clawed around a post by Hull goalkeeper David Marshall — did the dead-ball dependent visitors reveal the ambition required to claim all three points.
Things would have been different had Aden Flint’s header brushed the underside rather than the top of the cross bar shortly after Assombalonga’s poacher’s finish in the 51st minute from Howson’s right-wing cross.
But a failure to make it 2-0 was punished when home debutant Chris Martin, whose physical battle with Flint provided one of the game’s intriguing sub-plots, was floored by contact from ex-Hull defender Daniel Ayala.
Referee Darren England pointed to the spot and Bowen kept his concentration to send Darren Randolph the wrong way from 12 yards.
It was only the fourth time the division’s meanest defence had been breached in the league this season. At the other end, meanwhile, struggling Hull were shored up by a switch to a 3-5-2 formation.
‘We tried to nullify them and technically I was very pleased with a lot of the things that went on,’ said Hull’s head coach Nigel Adkins.
‘It’s a good point against a side that are going to be right up there.’
But as Pulis concedes, they will need to become sharper offensively if ‘right up there’ is to translate to automatic promotion.